Adequate CAP funding ‘prerequisite for everything else’ – ICMSA
The Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association (ICMSA) has warned that the right funding is not secured in the next Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), “everything afterwards is nearly meaningless”.
The association met with EU Commissioner for Democracy, Justice, the Rule of Law and Consumer Protection, Michael McGrath and Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Martin Heydon, as well as several Irish MEPs and EU Commission officials, in Brussels earlier this week.
The meeting comes ahead of key votes on CAP and Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) files European Parliament committees are scheduled to hold this autumn.
The EU has described these autumn committee votes as “critical steps in shaping the European Parliament's negotiating position for the post-2027 CAP budget and the upcoming MFF”.
Denis Drennan, president of ICMSA, said that adequate funding for the next CAP is the “prerequisite for everything else”.
He added: “If we can’t get the right funding for the next CAP, then everything afterwards is nearly meaningless.
"The effectiveness - or otherwise - is entirely dependent on the member states and the commission getting agreement on the kind of budget that’s required to give the flagship CAP policy meaning and effect.
“We repeated our convictions that CAP must rediscover its origins and ethos in supporting food production and the active farmers who do just that.
“But the first consideration - the very first - has to be a realistic level of funding that takes account of the ambitions that CAP now encompasses.”
Food security
According to Drennan, the ICMSA stressed to Commissioner McGrath and Irish MEPs that CAP is becoming "less and less relevant at precisely the time when its original ambitions – specifically, food security – are more important than ever".
He said the ICMSA told officials that "spinning" the question of budget allocation "into a ‘choice’ between CAP and food security and massively increased spending on defence is absolutely bogus and false".
"If the EU can’t feed itself, then all the defence spending in the world won’t matter.
“We have to ensure food security and that can only be achieved through a CAP that is adequately funded and focussed on supporting food production."
“That has to be the starting point and the prerequisite for everything else," Drennan said.
